


The Beginning of the End

by RDS_rambles



Category: Altered Carbon (TV), Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Crossover, F/F, Military V, tags updated as i go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:09:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29886432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RDS_rambles/pseuds/RDS_rambles
Summary: V is an ex-spec ops soldier who now works as a mercenary on Earth. Judy is a technician who isn't afraid to get her hands dirty for what she thinks is right.Crossover/AU, using technologies and locations from both 2077 and Alt Carb.
Relationships: Judy Alvarez/V
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28
Collections: Lizzie's Bar





	1. A Brief History of the Future

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter is a history/world-builder intended to introduce some of the Alt Carb concepts to folks who haven't watched that show (or read the novel).
> 
> Another important note is that while I do use Alt Carb as one of the major inspirations/sources, I don't agree with some of the views the original author holds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from the song "A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FUTURE" by Starset.

Novel Normandie. A lush planet with forest-covered continents and wide-stretching oceans. First discovered by the old US NASA astronomers some time in the 21st century as Caelinus III, it wasn’t until the 2120s that exoplanet analysis showed that it was within the parameters for human life.

A couple of decades later, a discovery was made on Mars that would shake humanity to its core; the cortical stack and the materials required to make them. A little disc implanted in the base of someone’s neck, the stack could hold the digitised essence of a person as D.H.F., digital human freight. No longer were humans bound to the flesh they were born in; they could transfer their data to a different stack, in a different body.

Of course, this was exploited immediately. Most people only lived out one or two lifetimes in this manner, since switching bodies, or “sleeves”, too often would lead to the person slowly going insane. The puissant rich, however, could afford the exorbitant fee of growing new, cloned sleeves. This allowed them to effectively live forever, untouched by manners deemed as trivial as the passage of time. And such, a new class was born: the Meths.

The stacks also allowed humanity to finally reach out for the stars. The Martian ruins that held the secrets to cortical stacks also held a star map with worlds they used to inhabit. They also had the means necessary to send vast amounts of data accurately, without being restricted by the speed of light. This precise manner of fast data transmission would colloquially be known as “needlecasting” and would form the basis of humanity's expansion out of the solar system.

Colony ships were constructed in shipyards all over Earth and hopeful groups of people signed up for passage towards new worlds. Many of the ships would not make it; some of them would burn up after passing too close to a star with too little time left for correctional maneuvers. Others would simply get lost and drift off into space forever.

Some would make it to their destinations, however. One such colony ship was the  _ Aréthuse _ , France’s primary contribution to humanity’s diaspora into the Milky Way. Built at the CMN shipyards in Cherbourg at the government’s orders, the ship contained everything that was needed to support the ten thousand sleeves which the colonists were going to be needlecasted into after making planetfall.

The  _ Aréthuse _ departed from Earth in 2201, with Caelinus III as its intended destination. None of the people involved in the building and launch of the ship would be in the same sleeve at the estimated time of arrival; the calculations showed that the vessel would make planetfall somewhere in between 2277 and 2290. Still, that did not mean that they could sit back. 

The French government wanted to be absolutely certain that the ship was going to arrive. Their goal was to carve out their own space in the cosmos; a space that could be obviously called “French.” Yes, English was the de facto language across the globe since the UN started to officially rule over Earth, but the French wouldn’t be the French if they weren’t stubborn about their language. To that end, they felt that the best way to achieve that was to have a predominantly French planet. 

In order to facilitate that, they had a mission control team fully operational around the clock, ready to remotely correct for even the smallest possible hitch. Decades went by, generations phased in and out, and the  _ Aréthuse _ was still boring its way through the vast expanse of extrasolar space. The mission control group have kept their work up diligently throughout those years; outside of one potentially dangerous scrape with a hotter than projected star, the flight had proven itself to be mostly smooth sailing.

And so, the mission control continued on until early 2280. It initially started as a day like any others: run diagnostic checks to ensure that every vital system on the ship was in working order and check its position relative to the course. That day’s check showed that the Caelinus system was well within the scope of the ship itself, which meant that it wouldn’t be too much longer before the  _ Aréthuse _ would touch down on the new planet.

The few months following that day were hectic ones for all the parties involved. Mission control was more busy than ever in order to avoid any hiccups so close to the finish line, colonists were lining up to book their passage into the sleeves waiting for them lightyears away. Only 6500 of the sleeves on the ship would be able to be inhabited by French colonists, though. A deal with the United Kingdom saw them gain the rights to 3500 sleeves on the vessel.

The  _ Aréthuse _ would reach the orbit of Caelinus III in late June of 2280, however it would not immediately be landed. First, Mission Control wanted to survey the planet to find a suitable landing site. Second, the French authorities wanted to save that occasion for  _ Quatorze Julliet _ , France’s national holiday. It was to be viewed as a symbol: a celebration of France on the old world and the herald of a new dawn, on a new world.

14 July rolled around; it was a bright and sunny day across France. The populace was celebrating the country in the best way they knew how: many musical acts performing all over the country and watching cyclists go up and down mountains as fast as they could go. On this particular  _ Quatorze Julliet _ , however, all that would be dwarfed. That day, France would officially stretch its sphere of influence beyond the solar system.

Mission Control was on edge throughout the day, positively anxious that something would go wrong at the last possible second. The landing site was determined a week beforehand; a large plain with forests bordering it on three sides and one of the planet’s oceans on the fourth. Still, calculations were frantically made to avoid the Aréthuse burning up in the planet’s atmosphere and to ensure the landing itself was as smooth as feasible. The tension hung thick in the air; no one wanted to be even remotely responsible for screwing up France’s biggest endeavour in centuries. They did their work mostly in silence, briefly broken by important information being relayed to colleagues. 

On their commands, the  _ Aréthuse _ started to tilt downwards, angled at forty-five degrees in order to maximize its forward contact profile with the atmosphere and spread out the friction as much as necessary. This had as an added benefit that the ship would be slowed down by the atmosphere itself at the most optimal rate. At the set angle, the vessel started to make its way down into the gravity well of Caelinus III and towards the designated landing site.

The landing plan was solid in its simplicity: slow the ship down gently using the natural atmospheric friction until it was sufficiently low, then tilt the vessel back up to its original angle to allow for its onboard parachutes to fold out. Mission Control’s calculations had estimated the altitude at which parachute deployment would have to happen at around 10 kilometers.

The altimeter on the ship ticked down and at 12 kilometers, the maneuver to rotate the ship back into its original orientation was commenced. Over the following two kilometers of the descent, this maneuver was completed before the parachutes were folded out for the last ten kilometers down.

The parachute-aided descent went smoothly, the ship slowly guided down towards the landing site. About thirty minutes after the parachutes were opened, the  _ Aréthuse _ ’s landing gear was folded out from under the ship. The last few hundred meters of the descent were shown on every screen in France and when the ship’s landing gear hit the plain, celebratory firework shows lit up all across the nation.

The French president delivered a rousing speech on how this would be one of the turning points in French history and that while the first part of the mission was achieved, it was still only the beginning. For the next step was to establish a foothold on the planet itself, then expand it into a fully fledged nation in its own right.

The colonists were casted into their new sleeves the next day to begin their task of building up a permanent presence on this new world. While it would be rather spartan, the colonists would not have much food issues; the parachutes were designed to rapidly dissolve on landing and spread fast-growing edible plant seeds around. The ship also had facilities onboard to produce various meats from stem cells.

Their combined efforts would see the quick establishment of a small city and once they were fully settled, the colonists could think of naming their new home. The planet was initially christened Nouvelle Normandie, since the colonisation effort was led from the eponymous French province. However, most of the English settlers could not properly pronounce "Nouvelle", instead bastardising it to "Novel". Yet, the name stuck and it wasn’t before long that the planet was known as "Novel Normandie".

Centuries went by, and the population of Novel Normandie had built up a flourishing nation in their own right. Notable cities on the planet included Hastings, this world's main military hub and New Rouen, the planet’s official capital and their first settlement. New Rouen is where this story truly begins…


	2. The Formation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The early story of this world's V: who is she, what is she like, what are some of her shaping experiences?

_ \--New Rouen, Novel Normandie, 12 October 210AC (2490 Earth) _

“Keep pushing,  _ chérie _ ,” Pierre Gadsby said to his wife, Katherine. She was panting, her face screwed by the hardship of labor. She pressed into his hand hard with her own as another contraction rolled through her body. It sent a slight shock of pain through his hand, but he knew that it was peanuts compared to what she felt at that moment. Alongside this, he noticed that she was at a particularly laborious stage thanks to her more erratic breathing.

“Breathe,  _ mon azalée, _ you got this. In,” he slowly breathed in, “out.” Keeping the same cadence, Pierre continued to calmly breathe. “In, out, in, out.” Katherine’s breathing settled in the same cadence as her husband’s while she continued to press on. He let his hand slip out of hers and walked around the bed to check on the birth’s progress.

“I can see her head emerge, you’re almost there!” There was excitement in his voice, the prospect of holding his daughter filling him with joy. Slowly but surely, the baby’s head slipped through the folds. As she started to see the light of life, Pierre gently moved his hands under his daughter’s head. He gently held her throughout the process and when the childbirth was complete, softly laid her down onto a towel. He tied up the umbilical cord in two places, grabbed a pair of sterilized scissors to snip it between the knots, then cleaned her up before gently placing her in her mother’s arms.

“Welcome to the world, Valérie Gadsby,” Katherine whispered softly. Allowing the tiredness she felt since her labor was done to fully wash over her, she fell asleep, with her daughter in her arms. Pierre gave his wife and daughter a soft kiss on their foreheads before he left; first to clean up the bedroom, then to have his daughter officially registered.

\--  _ New Rouen, Novel Normandie, 17 November 226AC (2506 Earth) _

Valérie, or Val as she was commonly referred to now, was sitting in the little garden of her parents’ house. She was quite lost in her own thoughts, pondering over what the future could hold for her. As she was thinking over the possible career paths she could take, a memory of a conversation she had with her parents a few years ago surfaced.

-

“Val, this is the  _ second _ time this week that you’ve gotten yourself into a fight.” Her father was looking sternly at her, a faint trace of disappointment visible in his eyes.

“He was being handsy to one of my friends, even after she clearly said that she didn’t want that. I stepped in to tell him he had to cut it out, and his retaliation was to punch me on the nose. I couldn’t let that slide.” She sounded annoyed

“That is still no reason to break someone’s nose,” Pierre interjected. He recognized that Val meant to do something good, but he couldn’t agree on his daughter’s methods. Earlier this week, he thought to himself that it was something that could be changed by giving her a way to vent her temper in a controlled manner. But before he would tell Val about it, he wanted to make sure that her mother was on board with it. Thankfully, she had agreed with him almost instantly. Now, all that remained for him to do was to put the idea forward to his daughter.

“Val, your mother and I have been thinking on how to deal with your anger flaring up the way it does. The way we see it, you clearly need a way to let it flow out of your system, preferably in a controlled environment. And a martial arts class is a good place to do so, speaking from my own experiences. So, what do you say to that?” Val’s surprise was palpable. She expected some form of punishment, not this.

“I’d like to. Thanks,  _ papa _ ! I’ll do my best to not let you and  _ maman _ down,” she said, already looking forward to her first lesson. 

-

The memory kept echoing around in her head while she was pondering her options. She knew that she had a temper in her that was hard to keep in control, even with the years of training she received in self-control. She also knew, through her temper, that she had a certain natural talent when it came to fights. Val knew that those were particular traits that weren't exactly useful everywhere and shortly after, she came to the conclusion that  only two options realistically lay ahead of her; the military or one of the gangs that made up the planet’s organized crime.

For her, the choice was easy. Her parents had instilled a strong sense of morals into her, including a healthy aversion for crime. Besides, she thought, joining the military would mean that she could help keep her parents safe and sound, even if it was through indirect means. 

Not long after, while having dinner, Val broke the news to her parents.

“ _ Maman, papa, _ I’ve decided to join the military.” She wasn’t sure what the best way to break the news would be, so she elected for the most direct option.

“May I ask you why?” Katherine asked, wondering what had driven her daughter to this decision.

“I feel like what I need right now is a structured environment where I can do my part for a larger goal. Plus, it will also give me a necessary focus point for when my temper gets the better of me.” Val fell silent afterwards, not knowing what else she could say at this moment.

“I understand your reasons completely,” her mother said softly.

“We both do,” her father interjected solemnly. “It’s… quite a lot to take in. But you believe it’s the best for you, so I’m not going to stop you.”

“We want you to carve out your own space in life, follow your own path. If this is your first step on that road, well, it’s what it is. We’re going to miss you, Val.”

“I’ll visit or at least call whenever I have the chance  _ maman _ , promise.”

“We’re going to keep you to that,” her mother laughed.

The rest of the evening was filled with laughter, the little family dedicated to not let Val’s imminent departure loom over them.

-

Basic training proved to be the hardest challenge Val had faced in her life so far. The regime that she and her fellow recruits followed was harsh; its main goal to build strength and endurance up as fast as it possibly could. The first couple of weeks, she had trouble adjusting to the program, with frequent muscle cramps in the evenings as a result. But once she had sufficiently adapted to the training, she noticed that her overall fitness had increased greatly.

Not too long after, training moved on to shooting practice and recon tests. Val couldn’t exactly explain how, but everything that got covered in these drills  _ clicked _ for her, as if she had done this for years already. Her skills did not go unnoticed with the local command. They started to pay special attention to Val’s training, making notes on her particular strengths.

Their observations continued over the next few months, and once they were confident of their findings, the results of their analysis were sent up the chain. The Colonial Tactical Assault Corps, commonly called CTAC, immediately recognized the potential Val held and sent out an invitation to Val for a meeting.

\--  _ Hastings, Novel Normandie, 11 February 229AC (2509 Earth) _

“Private First Class Valérie Gadsby, born 12 October 210AC in New Rouen, daughter of Pierre and Katherine Gadsby. Is that correct?” The lieutenant in front of Val spoke with a voice that wasn’t loud, yet commanded authority.

“Yes, sir,” Val deftly replied.

“We’ve seen your results, Gadsby. Most impressive. And at such a young age too. It seems like you were born for this. You’ve proven yourself to be highly effective in the field, with a knack for solving problems in ways that make them look easy. Those are exactly the qualities a good spec ops soldier needs.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“This is why I’ve come to offer you a place in the Colonial Tactical Assault Corps, or CTAC as we’re more commonly known as.”

“Wait, seriously? I thought you had to be in active service for at least six years before even coming close to being considered.” Val sounded surprised; she did not expect to be on the shortlist for a place in special operations this early, especially not CTAC.

“Usually, that is the case, but you have proven yourself to be an exceptional soldier already. I wouldn’t have called you in here if you weren’t, Gadsby.”

“I am honored that you think of me that way, sir. Where do I sign?” Despite her efforts, Val could not hide her eagerness.

“Not so fast, Gadsby. I can understand your enthusiasm, but I’d rather have you properly consider this before you make a definitive choice.” The lieutenant’s voice tone had shifted towards a warmer tone of voice when he spoke again.

“You got leave for a week. Go home, think this over, and come back to me on the 18th with your answer. Should you accept, you will spend a long time in a virtual environment for rapid training purposes. You won’t be able to inhabit a sleeve for a good, long while.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may go now.” Val left the office and closed the door softly behind her.

\--  _ Hastings, Novel Normandie, one week later _

Val entered the CTAC lieutenant’s office for the second time in a week. She had already made her decision to join up, yet she still felt a knot in her stomach at the prospect of leaving her home behind, possibly forever.

“Good afternoon, Gadsby. I trust you’ve made your decision?” Val could appreciate the lieutenant getting to the point quickly.

“I have. And I’m accepting your offer.” As she spoke, Val felt as if she had truly crossed the point of no return.

“Welcome to CTAC… V.”

\--  _ Outskirts of Cartagena, Latimer, 4 April 2515 (Earth) _

V felt the familiar pre-combat jitters course through her sleeve as she and her team moved up through the empty streets. They were with six, each one of them known to the rest by a single letter. V was the leader on this op, yet that didn’t mean that she always was in charge. CTAC brass preferred to assign a different leader every time they assembled a new strike team.

Their current mission was to assassinate a local politician by the name of Ramón Victorino. He had made waves across Latimer for his pretty openly anti-Protectorate rhetoric and was rapidly gaining a following. The Protectorate saw his rapidly growing influence as a threat to the fragile peace on the planet. Seeking to avoid another costly planetary war, they’ve sent in V’s strike team to neutralize the threat they perceived before a war could break out.

V hated this particular type of operation; she’d rather stay far away from the cesspit that was Protectorate politics. She felt like it was all a waste of time since when push came to shove, they still ruled with an iron grip over the Settled Worlds. The one time that an uprising got to a point that it seriously threatened their rule, on Harlan’s World, it led to a war that nearly brought the planet to ruin.

She refocused on the task at hand. V performed a quick scan of her rifle, checking if all vital components of the weapon were in good shape. The helmet scanner returned greens across the board. When she was satisfied with the result of her weapon scan, she moved on to test the communication channels to the rest of the strike team. She pulled up the comm links on her ONI, a standard-issue lens projecting a heads-up display directly onto the eye of the wearer, and checked if everyone had functioning comms.

“Comms check. Rather not want to go in with dead links.”

“K, ready to go.” K lifted his shotgun as an accompanying gesture.

“Q, locked and loaded.” Q repeated K’s lift with her sniper rifle.

“F, reading you loud and clear, V.” She lightly pumped her fist upwards in a sort of nod.

“Z, got you five by five.” He raised his rifle, one of his helmet’s eyes already aligned with the scope.

“H, ready to rock.” He swung his rifle forward, the bravado in his movements unmistakable.

“Good, all our comm links are working. Let’s get this show on the road.”

The six of them moved up through the deserted streets, spacing out in three couples of two; H and K being the vanguard, V in the middle with F and Q and Z bringing up the rear. It was eerily quiet, the silence hanging heavy in the air. They moved up a street and V suddenly felt like she was being watched by multiple prying eyes.

“Team, listen up. I have a hunch that this might be an am-” The rest of her sentence was drowned out by the sound of gunfire. Due to the darkness, it was hard to pinpoint where it was exactly coming from, but she wasn’t allowed much time to dwell on that as bullets whizzed past her. She returned fire in the vague direction of the incoming shots, not stopping to check if she had hit anyone. 

An assailant moved in on her left side, SMG lifted and ready to fire. V brought up her own rifle and pulled the trigger. A quick burst of bullets flew out of it and hit her attacker. Their leg gave way and they crumpled onto the ground, lying face down in a rapidly expanding pool of their own blood.

“Shit, V, this is bad! Someone tipped them off, they  _ knew  _ we were coming!” H relayed that information to V, voice raised by the effect of the adrenaline. K’s voice cut over the radio immediately afterwards, just as V spotted a glint in the distance.

“Sniper! Get d-” K managed to warn the unit just in time, yet he himself was less lucky; his head jerked backwards from the force of the bullet, blood mixed with a metallic blue substance spurting out of the back of his neck. He was Really Dead before his head hit the street. V knew that there would be a time to mourn him, but now, the mission was what counted. She opened the link to Q. 

“Q, see if you can get a bead on their sniper! I’m moving up to F to support.” V’s voice conveyed a sense of urgency, as if the entire mission depended on it. And in a way, it did. With the sniper still alive, there was no way in hell their strike team would be able to move up. Years of combat drills and battle strategy training have nested that truth firmly into V’s head.

“Copy that, V!” From the corner of her eye she saw Q ready her rifle, scanning the area ahead for the hostile sniper. She moved forward to assist F, who was currently pinned down by a small assault force.

V slid into cover right next to her, bullets and particle fire whizzing everywhere around them. She quickly pulled up her scanner and marked the closest assailants. Gunfire continued to bear down on their position from many different angles.

“Shit, V, we’re pinned down!” There was a slight tinge of panic in F’s voice. V couldn’t exactly blame her, with this whole operation having turned in such a fucking mess.

“Get your head down and grab one of your nades!” The adrenaline sent another surge through her body as she grabbed a cluster grenade from her belt. Next to her, F repeated her movements. They activated their grenades and with practiced motions, they threw them over their cover, towards their assailants. Three seconds later, the world in front of them turned into a pandemonium of explosions.

Just as fast as the explosions started, they stopped. V cautiously peeked over her cover to see the result of the grenades. The sheer carnage she saw once her eyes were lifted higher than the wall she used as cover surprised her. The cluster grenades had levelled two buildings in front of them and the resulting rubble was covered in the blood and viscera that used to be their attackers not five seconds ago.

There was no time to take a breather, however. V caught the briefest glimpse of a huge man barrelling straight towards them. He collided with F with what seemed like the force of a train, knocking her to the floor. He then reached onto his back to grab a massive shotgun from its holster. V moved to stop him, but the man turned around and smacked his elbow into V’s helmet. 

The impact left her dazed and unable to move for a brief moment. The man paid her no further mind and planted a foot into F’s stomach. The other woman tried frantically to shake him off, but he only pressed down harder. While still keeping F pinned down, he grabbed the shotgun from his back and aimed it squarely at her helmet. The scream that came from F’s lungs pierced through the link, filling V with an inescapable sense of dread. That dread turned into horror when the big man pulled the trigger. F’s helmet exploded; blood, bone and brains splattered the ground around the place where her head used to be.

V, recovered from the elbow hit to her helmet, moved towards the man, mind set on making him pay. She instinctively knew she had to get close enough that he couldn’t wield the shotgun against her. She moved swiftly, pulling a knife from her arm sheath as she slipped towards him. With the knife held in an inward reverse-edge grip, she crept up behind the man. 

He didn’t notice that V was behind him until it was too late. She viciously sliced his neck open, blood streaming out of the wound immediately. The man’s hands instinctively went to his neck to stop the bleeding and V struck again. She stabbed as deep into his neck as she could, the tip of the knife only stopped by the transverse bones. V pulled the knife out and put it back into its sheath, leaving the man behind to choke on his own blood.

V heard the  _ crack _ of a sniper rifle ring through the air, a sound that was almost immediately followed up by Q’s voice, ringing triumphantly over her comm.

“Sniper’s down! Finally got that son of a bitch!”

“Great work, Q! Can you provide overwatch?” A little flame of hope flickered on inside V; would they still be able to accomplish their mission?

“You got it, V! Providing overwatch n- _ aaaaaaaaaaaa _ …” 

“Q! Q, come in! What’s your status?”  _ Fuck, if Q’s dead, this mission is well and truly fucked,  _ V thought. The continuing silence from Q’s end only served to confirm V’s thoughts.

“Fuck!” She couldn’t help but curse out loud. Nearly immediately afterwards, H’s voice crackled alive over the link.

“V? Fucking finally, I couldn’t get through to you for quite a while.” The relief in his voice was unmistakable.

“Good to hear you too, H. Listen, we got to cut our losses and get the fuck out of here. See if you can radio Z, I can’t get a hold of his link.” 

“Z’s dead, V. I witnessed him getting literally torn apart by an explosion.”

“Shit! All the more reason to get the fuck out of here. This mission is FUBAR. Where are you now?”

“I’m pinging your position, one second. Annnnd… it’s done. You’re about three blocks away from me, to the north.”

“Hang tight, H, I’m coming to you. They’re going to be hot on our asses, so be ready to run.” V put the connection on the back burner, steadied her rifle and broke off into a run.

It didn’t take long for her to reach H. Upon arrival, she silently signaled towards him to follow her. He followed swiftly, increasing the pace at which they fled from the overwhelming force that killed the rest of their team.

They ran back alongside the same route they came in, hoping that once they were in the city proper, the crowds would help with shaking their pursuers off. The buildings became a blur as they raced towards Cartagena’s city center.

From out of nowhere, a shadowy figure jumped from the rooftop next to them, two blades readied. V briefly slowed down to take a closer look at the weapons, since it seemed like the figure was holding them at a weird angle. Then, she realized that the blades were coming out of their arms, the top of their forearms folded open to make way for the blades. She barely had time to react when H stepped in and opened fire on the figure.

“V, RUN! I’ll hold them off!”, he shouted while bearing down on their attacker. The bullets seemed to bounce off of them harmlessly as they closed the distance towards H. A sickening  _ squelch _ rang through V’s ears as she ran, and she briefly looked over her shoulder to see H lifted off the floor, the figure’s blade-arms impaling him through the chest.

V moved her gaze back forward just as gunfire came whizzing in from behind her. She broke into a mad sprint, a dash towards the relative safety and anonymity of the crowds that would pack the city center at this hour. More bullets came flying by and V increased her pace as much as she could, paying the familiar stings in her spleen no mind. She thought to herself that she could move faster without her rifle, which sparked an idea in her head.

Every CTAC-issued rifle came with a handy hidden function. In order to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, they were equipped with a self-destruct function with enough explosive power to level a block of houses. V briefly fumbled with the rifle until she found the switch that would set the self-destruct process in motion, then flicked it and in the same movement, threw the weapon backwards over her shoulder.

V continued the relentless pace she had set for herself to get away. She didn’t stop when she heard the deafening roar of her rifle exploding, instead using that as a cue to try and push every little ounce of speed she could muster out of this body. She only stopped once she reached the assigned safehouse.

V slumped down onto the couch to catch her breath before slipping into civilian attire. She made herself comfortable before establishing contact with her commanding officer. It didn’t take long for him to respond to V’s call.

“V? What happened?” His tone was shocked upon seeing the expression on V’s face.

“We were ambushed, it’s like they knew we were coming. The rest of the team is dead.”

“Fuck!” V had never heard him swear before. The fact that he did so now really showed how serious the situation was.

“Victorino probably assembled a small army already and with each passing day, his power will grow. We have to strike quickly and decisively if we want to stop this before it escalates into a planetary war. However, we can’t send in a full assault force without UN approval.”

“And this concerns me how, exactly?”

“You’re going to give your account of the events to the UN. They’ll have an easier time believing you than me, especially since you’re the last surviving witness.”

“OK, when do I leave?”

“You can leave in about ten minutes. Sending the cast destination data to the closest station now.”

“And where can I find the needlecast station?”

“The upstairs bathroom. Someone else will stop by and retrieve your sleeve for safe storage.”

“Copy that. V, out.” She closed the line. V felt anxiety take hold of her body, the prospect of reliving her teammates’ deaths in front of the UN’s highest ranking officers being nearly unbearable for her. She sat down on the couch again and tried to control her breathing in an effort to remain calm. V did not succeed; she still felt like a raw ball of nerves when she stepped into the needlecast station. The last thing that shot through her head as the world faded to black around her was a single word: “Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was... interesting to write, to say the least. The early days gave me a lot more trouble than the end, I'll say that much. Hopefully I have intrigued all of you sufficiently enough that you want to see a new chapter pretty soon. I can't promise anything, but I'll do my best :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully this wasn't too boring *sweats*
> 
> I wanted to give some background on some of the major locations/concepts that are going to be used throughout this story to make them understandable in the later chapters. Second chapter will focus on V's early story.


End file.
